On Friday, October 14th you can get a sneak peek at TriMet’s Portland Regional Trip Planner, which they bill as the “first open-source, multi-modal trip planner produced by a U.S. transit agency.”

Over three years in the making, TriMet’s new tool will function similarly to how you get trip directions on Google Maps; but unlike Google Maps, TriMet’s trip planner will let you plan trips that combine transit, walking and biking into a single itinerary. Making it even more attractive is the fact that it uses all open source technology through a partnership with OpenPlans.

Beyond being multi-modal and open-source, the tool has other nifty features. One of them is a way to filter bike trip results based on how you prioritize of time, hills, or safety (see graphic above). The new trip planner will also provide you with an elevation chart.

It uses USGS data to give an instant elevation profile of your trip.

You can play around with the beta version of the tool on TriMet’s website. The Portland Regional Trip Planner was funded through a Metro Regional Travel Options grant.

The public sneak peek at the new Regional Trip Planner is Friday, October 14th from 10:30 to 11:30 am in Metro Council Chambers (600 NE Grand). The official public launch will follow on Saturday.

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23 Comments

JacobOctober 4, 2011 at 4:19 pm

wow, took a quick look at the site. Really cool stuff. Definitely something I’d like to see my own city implement.

TriMet’s interns and I have been working for about a year now on getting bicycle and pedestrian data into the Portland area portion of OpenStreetMap, which is what TriMet’s using for the base map data and non-transit routing. I’m not sure where we’re at right now on getting transit routes imported.

I definitely like the concept behind bicycle preferences. The lack of this is why I never find Google Map’s bicycle directions useful. They assume I want the safest path when I’m really looking for the fastest and least hilly.

The TriMet interns actually had a hard time trying to reconcile Bike There! with this because OSM doesn’t presently have a method to rate safety of a route by bicycle as it tends to be too subjective, recommending routers take another approach to handling the issue based on attributes of the way (prefer/avoid bike lanes/tracks, major streets, side streets, dirt roads, etc).

This looks really great and I would really like to use it. However, I couldn’t seem to get it to route me onto the Springwater Corridor. Does it not incorporate MUPs and such? Maybe it’s just my ineptitude….

I am having some problems with getting a route to cross streets instead of an actual address. I’m assuming it’s because this is still in Beta, but it is very possible that I am also inept, especially since I’m only half way through my first cup of coffee at the moment. 😉

This is AWESOME!! I love maps and this is an insanely cool planning tool. I was having a hard time with the custom trip function, however. When I planned a trip from my house (near SE 45th and Hawthorne) to my daughter’s school (Ainsworth on SW Vista) I could get the “safest route” which got me to a bus as closely as possible, and I could get the “fastest route” which had me biking the entire distance downtown on Hawthorne (yikes…) but i could only get a custom trip when I centered the dot in the exact center of the triangle (33%, 33%, 34%). At that point it gave me the route I actually take (a combination of Main, Salmon, Madison). All other custom trips gave me the error message noted above. Overall, this is the coolest map program I have used.

We have a few clarifications to the post about TriMet’s new trip planner. The link to the OpenTripPlanner (http://maps5.trimet.org/opentripplanner-webapp/) in your post was established last year for demonstration purposes only and is not current, nor does it have all the new mapping features and up-to-date data. The actual beta version will be live as of 9 a.m. Saturday, October 15. Your readers should be clear that the link in your post is not the accurate version of the new tool.

The new Portland Regional Trip Planner, which uses all open source technologies, including OpenTripPlanner, will not be released until next Saturday. We are very excited about this beta release and look forward to getting comments from the public on the official launch and working with the public and the bike community on future enhancements and improvements.

This project was funded by a Metro Regional Travel Options Grant, and development on the application began in July 2009. Releasing an official beta version in 27 months demonstrates the advantages of open source software.

TriMet worked with members of the OSM community on improving the data for this project for the past year. If you have questions or comments about this project or the OSM data, please direct your comments to rtpfeedback@trimet.org.